In Canada, the federal politicians in Ottawa play Robin Hood. They take from the citizens of productive provinces like Alberta, as well as Ontario, British Columbia, Newfoundland and Labrador and Saskatchewan, and give to politicians in the remaining provinces of Quebec, Manitoba, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island.
These Canadian Robin Hoods call such takings equalization payments. Strangely though, after Robin Hood comes, Albertans and Saskatchewanians are made poorer relative to all Canadians per capita in their respective provinces. So much for equalization.
As Skurkiss argues:
Thanks to a several-decade-old energy boom, Alberta has a high per capita income. This results in the central government in Ottawa sucking taxes out of Alberta. For every dollar Alberta sends to Ottawa, it gets back only about 65 cents in return. This means that Albertans pay $21.8 billion more in taxes than they get back. And it is the aging population of Quebec that benefits the most from this income transfer.
To make matters worse, neighboring provinces have blocked landlocked Alberta from building pipelines for its oil and gas. As for the Trudeau central government, like all progressive administrations, it is enthralled with the green movement and is anti-fossil fuel in all forms.
Jenkins writes that this means that Alberta oil has to be shipped to markets by truck or rail, an expensive proposition either way, causing Edmonton's oil to sell at barely $10 a barrel – an 80% discount to world prices. Having to subsidize the rest of Canada while at the same time other Canadians try to squelch the province's energy industry has rankled many Albertans.
Zurkiss then quotes a fellow named Peter Zeihan who argues this:
Alberta's population is getting younger, more highly skilled and better-paid. As the demographic and financial disconnect between Alberta and the rest of Canada grows, these younger, more highly skilled, and better-paid Albertans will be forced to pay ever higher volumes of taxes to Ottawa to compensate for increasingly older, less skilled, and lower income Canadians elsewhere in the country.
Rightly, Skurkiss recognizes that landlocked Alberta could not function as an independent country. However, as a state of the USA, Alberta would have access to oil ports in Texas.
So in light of his work, I propose this fantasy trade, the deal of deals between Canadians and US citizens.
The GDP of Alberta roughly is US$253.4 billion. The combined GDPs of Maine, Vermont, and New Hampshire comes to US$174.2 billion. If the Canadians tossed in the Yukon, the total of the Canadian offer would be US$255.61. So if the US tossed in Hawai'i with a GDP is US$88.1 billion, the deal would about equalize.
Here is what it would look like:
The Possible Coming Realignment of the USA and Canada
Given the present trajectory of politics in the USA and the knock-on effects of a major change to the USA would have on Canada and Canadians, I would put it at better than 50-50 both countries split apart by 2060.
A possible scenario might look like the map below whether by civil wars or by orderly break-up. No country of note can survive without a warm water port, so that partly drives how I see things coming about.
Demographics are driving rapid changes in the USA. Before long, more states will fall into majority-minority status. This will lead to white flight from southern states to northern ones. With more power for mestizos and New World Africans in southern states, an exodus of their kind from northern states will happen.
Recent Chinese and Hindians to the USA will adapt to changing conditions and likely not move from where they have made inroads.
The great fight is shaping up between positive rights social democrats and freedom-oriented, negative rights republicans.
Look at the crazy state of current politic. While millions of single women and the colored races call for abortion at nine months, married whites see such as abomination. While millions of social democrats call for high taxation, nationalized medicine and nationalized higher education, liberty-oriented republicans call for and end to Congress' interference in medical insurance.
Gab It
